Anthropic to Pay SpaceX $1.25 Billion a Month for Compute Power Anthropic has quietly become one of SpaceX’s biggest customers, committing to AI compute spending so large it could nearly double the rocket company’s revenue — but on terms either side can walk away from in three months.

In early May 2026, Anthropic and SpaceX signed a massive compute agreement after the AI lab announced it would buy capacity from SpaceX’s Colossus data center in Tennessee to run tools for its “booming AI business.” Around the same time, Anthropic disclosed it was expanding to SpaceX’s newer Colossus 2 facility and scaling up on Nvidia GB200 chips there.

Financial details remained unclear until May 20, when SpaceX’s S-1 IPO filing revealed that “Anthropic is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion a month” for compute power through May 2029. That translates to roughly $15 billion per year, potentially more than $40 billion over the full term of the deal if it is not terminated early.

From Anthropic’s perspective, the spending reflects both urgency and growth: the company is “hampered by a lack of compute power” even as its revenue “is taking off.” Colossus capacity will be used primarily for inference — how AI models generate outputs for customers — rather than training new models.

For SpaceX, the contract is both a lifeline and a hedge. The payments “nearly double” its roughly $18 billion in annual revenue and help monetize “unused compute capacity” while preserving the option to reallocate it to SpaceX’s own AI work. Yet the company’s filing also shows AI-related operating losses ballooning to more than $6 billion last year, driven by GPU costs and cloud spending, and even flags “manufacturing our own GPUs” as a future capital project — a move that would pit SpaceX against Nvidia.

Both companies retain the right to exit the agreement with 90 days’ notice, underscoring how volatile the AI compute race remains. Publicly, SpaceX’s leadership is leaning into the moment: “The SpaceX team is incredible!” Elon Musk wrote after the filing, amplifying praise for the company’s track record and ambitions.

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